The Loudwater Mystery/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
OLIVIA came that night to her tryst with Grey in a great dejection. She perceived clearly enough that the instant discharge of William Roper would not stop the scandal, and she was desperately afraid of the results of it. The hope which had sprung up in her mind on reading in the Daily Wire the story of her husband's quarrel with an unknown woman died down. This was a far more important matter, and she could not see how the police could fail to act on William Roper's story.
She found Grey waiting for her with his wonted impatience, and presently told him about William Roper.
"This is the very thing I've been fearing," he said with a sudden heaviness.
"It will certainly force Mr. Flexen's hand," she said.
"I don't know—I don't know," he said more hopefully. "Flexen struck me as being the kind of man to act just when it suited him, and I expect that he had known all along anything William Roper had to tell."
"Yes, he did. Twitcher told me that Roper had an interview with him on the afternoon after Egbert's death," she said, catching a little of his hopefulness.
"Well, if he hasn't done anything about it so far, there's no reason why he should act immediately the story becomes common property," he said in a tone of relief.
"No—no," she said slowly. Then she sobbed once and cried: "But, oh, this waiting's so dreadful! Never knowing what's going to happen and when—feeling that he's lying in wait all the time."
"It is pretty awful," he said, drawing her more closely to him and kissing her.
She clung tightly to him, quivering.
"The only thing to do is to stick it out, and when the time comes—if it comes—put up a good fight. I think we shall," he said in a cheering tone.
"Of course we will," she said firmly, gave herself a little shake, and relaxed her grip a little.
He kissed her again, and they were silent a while, both of them thinking hard.
Then he said: "Look here: let's get married."
"Get married?" she said.
"Yes. The more we belong to one another the better we shall feel."
"But—but won't there be rather an outcry at our marrying so soon?" she said.
"Oh, if people knew of it, yes. But I don't propose that they should. We'll get married quite quietly. I'll get a special licence. The padre of my regiment is in Town, and he'll marry us. I can find a couple of witnesses who'll hold their tongues. We can get married in twenty-four hours. Will you?"
"Yes," she said firmly.
His surprise at her ready assent was drowned in the joy it gave him.
The next morning at half-past nine Mr. Manley rang up Mr. Flexen at his office at Low Wycombe.
When he heard his voice he said: "Good morning, Flexen. A young fellow of the name of William Roper will be calling on you this morning. I expect you know all he has to say already. But do you see anything to be gained by his making a pestiferous, scandal-mongering nuisance of himself?"
"I do not. I will say a few kind words to him," said Mr. Flexen grimly.
Mr. Manley thanked him and rang off. Then he sent Hutchings down to the village to let it be known that any one who let William Roper lodge in his or her cottage would at once receive notice to quit it. He thought it improbable, in view of the general unpleasantness of William Roper, that he would be called on to carry out the threat.
William Roper had already started to pay his visit to Mr. Flexen. Mr. Flexen kept him dangling his heels in his office for three-quarters of an hour before he saw him. This cold welcome allowed much of William Roper's sense of his great importance in the district to ooze out of him.
Mr. Flexen emptied him of the rest of it. He greeted him curtly, heard his story with a deepening frown, and abused him at some length for a babbling idiot, and sent him about his business. William Roper returned to his mother's cottage to find that her only object in life was to get him out of her cottage then and there. She had conceived the idea that the whole affair was a plot to have a good excuse for giving her notice to leave that cottage. She knew well that it was the opinion of all its other inhabitants that the village would be much better without her and that there were very good grounds for it.
William Roper perceived with uncommon clearness the truth of Mr. Flexen's assertion that he was a babbling idiot. His dream of outing William Hutchings from the post of head-gamekeeper and filling it himself was for ever shattered, and he had been the great man of the village for little more than fourteen hours, ten of which he had spent in sleep. He cursed the hour in which he had espied that luckless kiss, and too late perceived the folly of a humble gamekeeper's meddling with the affairs of those who own the game he keeps.
The next morning Elizabeth observed that her mistress was another creature, almost her old self indeed. The air of strain and oppression had, for the time being at any rate, gone from her face. She moved with her old alertness. She even smiled at Elizabeth's strictures on the treacherous William Roper.
After breakfast she bade Elizabeth pack a trunk for her, since she was going to London that afternoon and would spend the night, perhaps two or three days, there. Also, she chose, with frowning thoughtfulness and no little changing of mind, the frocks she would take with her, and discussed carefully with Elizabeth the changes necessary to give them a sufficiently mourning character.
Elizabeth was indeed pleased with the change in her mistress. She ascribed it to the influence of Colonel Grey.
In the afternoon Olivia went to London and drove from Paddington to Grey's flat. She found him awaiting her with the most eager expectation. He had bought the special licence; the chaplain of his regiment and a wounded friend were coming at seven o'clock. After they were married, they would all four dine together, and, later, he and she would return to his flat.
They had tea, and then he showed her some of the beautiful things, for the most part ivory and jade, which were his most loved possessions. She admitted frankly that she had to learn to appreciate and admire them as they deserved. But she was sure that she would learn to do so.
She found the flat of a somewhat spartan simplicity after Loudwater Castle, Quainton Hall, and the houses to which she was used. But she also found that it had been furnished with a keen regard for comfort. In particular, she observed that the easy chairs, which were the chief furniture of the sitting-room, were the most comfortable she had ever taken her ease in.
At seven o'clock the padre and Sir Charles Ross, Grey's wounded friend, arrived. After they had talked for a few minutes, making Olivia's acquaintance, the padre married them. Henderson, Grey's valet, a tall, spare Scot with rugged features who in the course of his seven years' service had acquired, in his manner and way of speaking, a curious and striking likeness to his master, was the second witness.
It was wholly characteristic of Olivia that she felt no slightest need of the supporting presence of a woman. Yet, for all the unfamiliar simplicity of the scene, the ceremony did not lack dignity, or impressiveness. At the end of it Olivia felt herself very much more the wife of Antony Grey than she had ever felt herself the wife of Lord Loudwater.
They dined in a private dining-room at the "Ritz," and Olivia found the dinner delightful. The three men, after some desultory talk about common friends and the ordinary London subjects, fell to talking about their work and their fighting in France. She was most pleased by the evident respect and admiration with which the other two regarded her husband. It was a new experience for her to be married to a man for whom any one showed respect.
At a few minutes past ten she and Grey went home to his flat. They preferred to walk.
Olivia did not return to Loudwater for three days. Grey did not return till the day after that. Then they again spent much of their time in the pavilion in the East wood, and since Olivia was careful not to replace William Roper, no one knew of their meetings. Every week they went to London for two days. They lived in an absorption in one another which left them little time to be troubled by fears of the danger which hung over them. The scandal about them ran the usual nine days' course. Then, since no new development of the Loudwater case arose to give it a fresh, active life, it died down.
About a fortnight after their marriage Mr. Manley retired from his post of secretary and went to London. A few days later he married Helena Truslove at the office of a registrar, and they established themselves in a furnished flat at Clarence Gate, while they furnished a flat of their own. Mr. Manley found himself, under the influence of domesticity, the stimulation of life in London, and the society of the intelligent, writing his new play with all the ease and vigour he had expected.
Mr. Flexen was beginning, somewhat gloomily, to think it probable that the problem of the death of Lord Loudwater would have to be set among the unsolved problems which have at different times baffled the police. Then, before he had quite lost hope, there came a letter from Mr. Carrington. It ran:
"Dear Mr. Flexen,
"I received this morning a letter from Mrs. Marshall, of 3, Laburnum Terrace, Low Wycombe, asking me, as the agent of the present Lord Loudwater, to have some repairs made to the house in which she is his lordship's tenant. We have never handled this property; we did not even know that it belonged to the late Lord Loudwater. If you can find the man who managed it for him, he may be able to give you the information you want.
"Yours faithfully,
In ten minutes Mr. Flexen was at 3, Laburnum Terrace; in a quarter of an hour he had learned that Mrs. Marshall had paid her rent to Mr. Shepherd, of 9, Bolton Street, Low Wycombe; in twenty minutes he had learned from Mrs. Shepherd that her husband was in Mesopotamia, and that she had not heard from him for two months. In half an hour from the time he read Mr. Carrington's letter he was in the train on his way to London. To get in touch with Captain Shepherd in that distant and backward land was a matter for Scotland Yard. No acting Chief Constable would do so without considerable delay.
He drafted the telegram in consultation with one of the commissioners, who himself set about the business of getting it through to Captain Shepherd and receiving his answer to it. Then he returned to Low Wycombe. Three days later came a letter from Scotland Yard to inform him that Captain Shepherd was in an out-of-the-way district in the north of Mesopotamia, and that there must be a delay of days before he received the telegram and sent his answer to it. Mr. Flexen possessed his soul in the patience of a man who was sure that he was going to get what he wanted.
A few days later, on a Saturday, his work took him to Loudwater, and he called on Olivia. He found her a different creature. She had lost her air of being under a strain, and save that her eyes were at first anxious, she showed herself wholly at her ease with him. He came away assuring himself that she was one of the most charming women he had ever met. He took it that she still met Colonel Grey in the pavilion in the East wood, and that after a decorous lapse of time they would marry. He thought Colonel Grey uncommonly fortunate.
Then he again wondered what had so perturbed t them when he had been at the Castle inquiring into the death of Lord Loudwater. What did they know of the mystery? What part had they played in it?
Soon after he had left her Olivia went to London to spend the week-end with her husband. But she did not go in her wonted joyful mood. She tried to thrust it out of her mind; but Mr. Flexen's visit had brought back her old fear. Grey at once perceived that she was not in good spirits, and he was a little alarmed. He had firmly kept his thought from the danger which still hung over them. Now he caught from her something of her uneasiness. But he would not yield to it, and by the end of dinner he had, for the while at any rate, banished it from both their minds.
Then when he awoke that night, quietly, at the turning hour, he heard Olivia crying very softly.
He put his arm round her and said seriously "What is it, darling? What's the matter?"
"Oh, why ever did you kill him?" she wailed. "He—he wasn't worth it. And I'd have come to you without. And we might have been so happy!"
Grey, with a start, sat bolt upright, and in a tone of the last astonishment stammered: "K-K-Kill him? Me? B-B-But I thought you k-k-killed him!"
He had never been so taken aback in his life.
Olivia sat bolt upright in her turn.
"Me?" she said in an astonishment fully as great as his. "No, I didn't."
Then with one accord they clung to one another and laughed tremulously in an immeasurable relief.
Then Olivia said: "And you didn't mind? You married me when you actually thought I'd murdered Egbert?"
"Oh, Egbert!" said Grey in a tone of contempt which placed the late Lord Loudwater definitely as a person the murder of whom was neither here nor there. Then he added: "But, hang it all! You married me when you actually thought I'd murdered him."
"I thought you did it for my sake," said Olivia.
"I thought you did it for mine—to get me out of a mess. Though I'll be shot if I believe I should have cared if you'd done it entirely on your own account. Not that you could."
"Oh, Antony, how very fond of one another we must be!" said Olivia in a hushed voice.
It was after breakfast next morning that Olivia, who stood before the window, smoking a cigarette and watching the passers-by, turned and said: "But if neither you nor I murdered Egbert, who did?"
"The mysterious woman, I suppose," said Grey, with very little show of interest in the matter.
"But I never believed that there was any mysterious woman, I thought the papers invented her," said Olivia.
"So did I," said Grey. "But it's beginning to look to me as if there might have been one."
"I wonder who she can be?" said Olivia.
"A barmaid, I should think," said Grey, in a tone which placed definitely the late Lord Loudwater as a lover.
"You certainly do dislike Egbert," said Olivia, in a dispassionate tone of one stating a natural fact of little importance.
"I do," said Grey.
"It's odd how little I remember him," said Olivia thoughtfully. "But then I was always trying to forget him unless he was actually in the room with me. And then I was always trying not to see him."
"I remember the way he treated you," said Grey sternly.
Olivia smiled at him.
"I hope to goodness the police never do find that wretched woman!" he said.
Olivia frowned thoughtfully. Then she smiled again.
"I don't think it would be much use if they did," she said. "I told Mr. Flexen that I heard Egbert snoring about twelve o'clock. I didn't; but I thought that as you went away about half-past eleven, it would make it safer for you. I could always stick to it, if we thought it right."
"And I told Flexen that I didn't hear him snoring at about half-past eleven, and I did. I thought it would make it safer for you."
"Well, we are" said Olivia, and she laughed.
Then of a sudden her eyes sparkled and she cried: "But if you heard him snore at half-past eleven that lets the mysterious woman out. She went away at a quarter-past."
"By Jove! so it does," said Grey.
Three days later, driving back in the evening from Rickmansworth to Low Wycombe, Mr. Flexen passed Grey on his way home from an afternoon's fishing. He stopped the car, and as Grey came up to it he perceived that he was looking uncommonly well, though his limp appeared to be as bad as ever. He was not only looking well, he was also looking happy, wholly free from care.
They greeted one another and Mr. Flexen said: "By Jove! you are looking fit!"
"Yes, I'm all right again," said Grey. Then he frowned and added: "But the nuisance of it is that I shall always have this confounded limp."
"You get off more lightly than a good many men I know," said Flexen sadly.
"Yes. I'm not grousing much," said Grey.
There came a pause, and then Grey said: "I've been rather hoping to come across you. When you questioned me about my doings on the night of Loudwater's death, you asked me whether I heard him snore as I went through the library, going in and out of the Castle, and for reasons which seemed quite good to me at the time I told you I didn't. As a matter of fact, he was snoring like a pig when I came out."
Mr. Flexen looked at him hard, thinking quickly. Then he said softly: "My goodness! That would be half-past eleven!"
"Close on it," said Grey.
"Well as a matter of fact, I didn't believe you," said Mr. Flexen frankly. "In my business, you know, one acquires a very good ear for the truth."
Grey laughed cheerfully and said: "I expect you do."
"All the same, I'm glad to have it for certain," said Mr. Flexen, smiling at him. "Well, I must be getting on; let me give you a lift as far as Loudwater."
Grey thanked him and stepped into the car.
When he had set him down, Mr. Flexen drove on in frowning thought. Colonel Grey was speaking the truth, and in that case neither James Hutchings nor the mysterious woman had committed the murder, unless they had deliberately returned for the purpose. He did not believe that James Hutchings had returned; he thought it improbable that the mysterious woman had returned.
Even more important was the fact that this admission of Colonel Grey assured him that neither he nor Lady Loudwater had committed the murder. Grey had evidently lied to shield her. He had no less evidently learned that she did not need shielding. That admission had not at all simplified the problem.
The next morning Scotland Yard telegraphed to him the reply to its cable to Captain Shepherd. It ran:
Loudwater allowed Mrs. Helena Truslove Crest Loudwater six hundred a year and gave her Crest.
He had the mysterious woman at last!
He drove over to the Crest at once and learned from the caretaker that Mrs. Truslove was now living in London in a flat at Clarence Gate. He could not get away from his work till the afternoon, and it was past half-past four when he knocked at the door of her flat.
The maid led him down the passage, opened the door on the right, and announced him.
Helena was sitting beside a table on which afternoon tea for two was set. She looked surprised to hear his name.
"Mrs. Truslove?" he said.
"I was Mrs. Truslove," she said, rising and holding out her hand. "But now I am Mrs. Manley. You know my husband. He will be so pleased to see you again. I'm expecting him every minute."
Mr. Flexen was for a moment conscious of a slight sensation of vertigo. The mysterious woman was the wife of Herbert Manley!
He could not at once see the bearings of this fact, but ideas, fancies and suspicions raced one another through his head.
He checked them and said in a somewhat toneless voice: "I shall be delighted to see him again. Have you been married long?"
"Rather more than a fortnight." said Helena. "But do sit down. My husband will be so pleased to see you again. He has a great admiration for you."
Mr. Flexen sat down and unconsciously stared hard at her. Ideas were jostling one another in his head.
"We won't wait for him. I'll have the tea made at once," she said, bending forward to press the bell-button.
"One moment, please," he said in his crispest, most official voice. "I've come to see you on a very important matter."
"Oh?" she said quickly, frowning. Then she looked at him with steady eyes.
"Yes. You know that I am investigating the Loudwater case, and I have received information that you are the mysterious lady who visited Lord Loudwater on the night of his death and had a violent quarrel with him."
"We began by quarrelling," she said quietly.
"Began by quarrelling?" said Mr. Flexen.
"Yes. I'd better tell you the whole story, and you'll understand," she said in a matter-of-fact voice. "Rather more than two years ago I was engaged to be married to Lord Loudwater. He broke off our engagement and married Miss Quainton. I was not going to stand that, and I was going to bring a breach of promise action against him. He didn't want that, of course. It would most likely have stopped his marrying Miss Quainton. So he agreed to make over the Crest, my house just beyond Loudwater, to me, and pay me an allowance of six hundred a year."
"This was two years ago?" said Mr. Flexen.
"Yes," said Helena. "But stupidly, though I had the house properly made over to me, I didn't have a deed about the allowance. And a few days before he committed suicide"
"Committed suicide?" Mr. Flexen interrupted.
"Of course he committed suicide. Didn't Dr. Thornhill say that the wound might have been self-inflicted? Besides, poor Egbert had a most frightful temper."
"But why should he commit suicide?" said Mr. Flexen.
"He may have been upset about Lady Loudwater and Colonel Grey. Why, I'm quite sure that it would drive him mad—absolutely mad for the time being. I know him well enough to be sure of that."
"Yes—yes," said Mr. Flexen slowly. "It's a tenable theory, doubtless. But about your quarrel with him."
"A few days before he died he talked about halving my allowance. And, of course, I was frightfully annoyed about it. I wanted to have it out with him—I meant to—but I knew that he'd never let me get near him, if he could help it. But I knew, too, that he sat in the smoking-room every evening after dinner, and generally went to sleep. You know everything about every one in the country, you know. And I determined to take him by surprise, and I did. We did have a row, for I was frightfully angry. It seemed so mean. But he stopped it by telling me that he had instructed his bankers—we have the same bankers—to pay twelve thousand pounds into my account instead of allowing me six hundred a year."
There was just the faintest change in her voice as she spoke the last sentence, and it did not escape Mr. Flexen's sensitive ear. He thought that the whole story had been rehearsed; it sounded so. But she spoke the last sentence just a little more quickly. The rest of the story rang true, or, at any rate, truer.
"Twelve thousand pounds," he said slowly. "And did Lord Loudwater tell you when he instructed his bankers?"
"No. But it must have been that very day. The letter must have been in the post, in fact, for two mornings later I received a letter from the bank telling me that they had credited me with that amount—the morning after the inquest, I think it was."
"I see," said Mr. Flexen, and he paused, considering the story. Then he said: "And were you surprised at all at his doing this?"
"Yes, I was," she said frankly. "It didn't seem like him. But since I've wondered whether he had made up his mind to commit suicide and wished to leave things quite straight."
It was a plausible theory, but Mr. Flexen did not believe that Lord Loudwater had committed suicide.
"I suppose that your husband knows all about it?" he said at random.
"He may, and he may not. He hasn't said anything to me about it," she said.
"Then we may take it that he did not write the letter of instruction to the bankers," said Mr. Flexen.
"Oh, he might have done and still have said nothing about it. He has a very sensitive delicacy and might have thought it my business and not his. I haven't told him about the twelve thousand pounds yet. I don't bother him about business matters. In fact, I'm going to manage his business as well as my own."
"And he didn't know about the allowance?" said Mr. Flexen.
"Oh, yes, he did. I told him all about that," said Helena quickly.
Mr. Flexen paused, considering. He seemed to have learnt from her all she had to tell.
There came the sound of the opening of the door of the flat and of steps in the hall. Then the door of the room opened, and Mr. Manley came in. Mr. Flexen's eyes swept over him. He was looking cheerful, prosperous, and rather sleek. His air had grown even more important and assured.
He greeted Mr. Flexen warmly and beamed on him. Then he demanded tea. But Mr. Flexen rose, declared that he must be going, and in spite of Mr. Manley's protests went. It had flashed on him that he might just catch Mr. Carrington at his office.